European Patent Office: record patent applications from Austria

More than 2,000 patent applications were submitted to the European Patent Office from Austria last year – a new record high.

The latest European Patent Office (EPO) annual report shows a 2.6% growth in European patent applications from Austria, with a total of 2,040 for 2016 (up from 1,989 in 2015). Austria reached 9th place within Europe and 13th in the world.

AVL List GmbH filed the most patent submissions from Austria, followed by Zumtobel/Tridonic and Julius Blum GmbH . The greatest number of patents from Austria were submitted in the categories of ‘electrical machinery, apparatus and energy’ (10.5%) and ‘civil engineering’ (6.4%).

The total number of patent applications submitted to the EPO remained almost the same compared to 2015, a figure that demonstrates the growing importance of patent protection for companies from all over the world. The top five countries by number of applications were the USA, Germany, Japan, France and Switzerland.

If population size is factored in, Austria is in fact at 7th place, with 234.2 applications per million citizens – way ahead of the mean for the 28 EU countries, which submit an average of 122 applications per million.